Offers a garbage non-apology.
When you read the website name “W3itch.io” you may assume that this website is a spinoff of Itch.io, a well known storefront where indie devs host their games. After all it has an almost identical name and almost identical user interface. What you may not know is that W3itch.io has nothing to do with Itch.io, either being the same company or related in any sense of the term legally or otherwise. It’s just one of two hundred million web3 scam companies that will kick up this year.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from a lot of these startup Web3 companies in the past, it’s that the people operating them tend to fall into a realm where scientists of the future will endlessly debate whether they are morons or criminally incompetent, or just criminal morons. The W3itch.io website itself is of course derivative, using stolen .css files from the real Itch.io website. So brazen in their criminal incompetence that the website at one point apparently said Itch.io for mobile users.
Many of the games listed on W3itch.io were also stolen from rpgmaker.net without notifying or obtaining permission from the creators. As one would expect from a scam, the host of W3itch.io justified stealing the games by claiming the creators were just really hard to get in touch with, before refusing to remove the stolen titles and instead offering that creators should reach out to them to have their content taken down. That’s not how copyright law works.
If you find that your content has been stolen, please leave a comment under this tweet or give me a DM and we’ll contact its uploader to coordinate with him/her to remove these contents. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the community for the offense we caused.
— w3itch.io (@w3itchio) June 29, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
For those of you in the audience, the hosting of the games is still illegal even if the creator didn’t respond. W3itch.io is a scam run by scam artists that kicked off by stealing the name of an established website, stealing games from established indie creators, and trying to kickstart its business off of stolen property. In other words, just another day for Web3 startups.
The only thing more dimwitted and low effort than the creation of the website itself is the owner’s attempt at avoiding burning it in the incinerator where it belongs. At the very least the creator is very openly, as George Carlin would say, “dumber than a second coat of paint.” Not only admitting that their Twitter account is completely fake (only 200 followers are real) but that they thought they could “fake it till make it.” At least they understand that nobody likes them.
In fact, we only have about 200+ real followers if I am not wrong. And most of them didn’t like this product, so basically we didn’t make a product that people want, doomed. 😦
— w3itch.io (@w3itchio) June 30, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
That’s all my fault, I thought we could “fake it till make it”. But there was no expectation that it would cause that much harm to the entire creator community … At the moment it looks like this project is completely useless and nobody needs it. At least in the coming 5 years.
— w3itch.io (@w3itchio) June 30, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
W3itch.io can rot in a pit, along with the people who tried to peddle it as a legitimate service. Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.
MMO Fallout 